accompanied to Kent by a French bishop, named Luidhard, who must have
acted chiefly as her private chaplain. Ethelbert nobly kept his word,
and thus the piety of Bertha, and her religion, may easily and deeply
have impressed the Kentish heathen. That the Celtic bishops and
clergy--"sacerdotes e vicinio"--did nothing for the conversion of the
heathen English can scarcely be matter of surprise, though possibly of
regret. For they were not only Christians, but belonged to the conquered
race; whom, apart from their religion, it was the policy of the
conquerors to drive out of the country, and who were compelled to take
refuge in the remotest districts of the land. The Frankish bishops seem
to have done little or nothing in response to Queen Bertha's
solicitations; and Gregory ordered Candidus, administrator of the
Patrimony of St. Peter in Gaul, to bring up English youths, and have
them trained in monasteries, and fitted to be made missionaries to their
own land. At length, in the sixth year of his pontificate, he determined
to undertake the work himself; and sent from his own monastery of St.
Andrew, on the Caelian Hill, in Rome, a company of forty monks, headed by
their prior, Augustine.

Their progress at first was rapid. Starting in the summer of A.D. 596,
they soon arrived in the neighborhood of Aix, in Provence. But the
nearer they came to what should have been their journey's end, the less
inclined they were for the work to which they had been appointed. The
heathen English were represented as barbarians of unusual ferocity; and
the companions of Augustine were as frightened as the companions of
Caleb and Joshua. They induced their prior to return to Gregory and seek
a release from their perilous task. But Gregory was not a man to be
frightened himself, or to have much sympathy with cowards. He wrote,
however, with great gentleness: "For as much as it had been better not
to begin a good work than to think of desisting from that which has been
begun, it behoves you, my beloved sons, to fulfil the good work which,
by the help of the Lord, you have undertaken. Let not, therefore, the
toil of the journey, nor the tongues of evil-speaking men, deter you:
but with all possible earnestness and zeal, perform that which by God's
direction you have undertaken." He furnished them with letters to the
bishops of Tours, Marseilles, Vienne, and Autun, and also to the
metropolitan of Arles. After the lapse of a year they slowly con